Kiss Me Hard
by Nienna's Scriptorium
Summary: A series of seven vignettes. Christian finishes his masterwork: the detail of his affair with Satine, but months after her death, he still finds his greatest inspiration in his haunting memories, as he shifts in and out of the present. COMPLETE.


A/N: A series of seven vignettes. As Christian finishes his masterwork of his affair with Satine, the story continues to haunt him…

Disclaimer: All rights to Moulin Rouge belong to Baz Luhrman, et al.

**Kiss Me Hard**

I.

"_Days turned into weeks... weeks turned into months…"_

He can not say exactly why he chose that day to begin writing their story. He thinks maybe it was the first day that he was not physically ill, or drunk on absinthe, or lost and wandering in the medieval streets of Montmartre. All the days previous, if he thought backwards (which was hard to do on the effects of opiates) to the day that she died, had only offered him snatches of memories and days they had been together. They had not had many, and still he could not pull them all together at that time.

That day, months after the opening night of Spectacular Spectacular, he remembered the first time he saw her as the Sparkling Diamond, and the first time they were together after rehearsals had begun, and the first time they were nearly caught by the Duke.

And the night she died. He remembered it all, in order and in detail. He loved and hated it all.

That day, months after he was devastated by the loss of Satine, he sat down at his typewriter and remembered also the first commandment of being a writer: he had to write what he knew to be true, no matter how much it hurt.

On that day, months after his old life had ended, he learned it hurt more when he tried not to think about her.

II.

Every moment he spent with Satine she surprised him, so he spent most of the first week of rehearsals (when they were not actually rehearsing, writing, arguing, or making love) preparing his surprise for her.

"Christian, as much as I love being with you, and as much as I hate being with the Duke, I must protest that we have spent entirely too long today working, and I must get some rest. You, too, you look exhausted. Why don't we call it a night, hmm?"

He loved everything about her, and he loved her silky, accented voice and the way she could make anything sound theatrical and exciting.

"Won't you have dinner with me first?"

She smiled the genuine grin that she reserved for him, not the showy, seducing smile that she used on all the other men. He knew she loved him as much as he loved her the first time he saw her grin. "A capital idea, my love. Let's adjourn our rehearsal for today."

They had worked alone all day together, as he knew they would, and they had gotten much done, as he knew they would, and she was very tired, as he had though she might be, and now he tore off his makeshift cape and his writing hat and hurried over to the far corner of his room.

She was slower in removing her practice costume, and she made a puzzled sound at his actions. She arched an eyebrow at his bustling around the tiny stove he had paid dearly to rent, and squinted to see what he was gathering in his arms.

"Aren't you charming!" she exclaimed when he finally turned around to present his surprise to her.

He had laid out a roast beef platter with orange slices encircling the meat, and thick whipped potatoes and some sort of towering gelatin dessert, all arranged on his uneven card table. He had procured a spotless white table cloth to place beneath the food, and he set out two fine glasses in which he poured what appeared to be a very expensive wine.

"I can't think of a better way to end this wonderful day," she said to him as she came over to the table. He held out her chair for her, and she turned her head so that he would not see the tears that threatened to spill from her eyes.

"I can," he said, with more gallantry than he wished her to know he felt, and he produced from behind him a pair of silk embroidered slippers. "Those ridiculous boots you wear all the time… I want you always to wear these when you come here—to my room, so that you'll associate me with… comfort."

"You can't imagine how much this means to me!" she cried, and she jumped from her seat, nearly upsetting the table, and threw her arms around him.

"You're better than any gentleman I have ever met. I only want you, forever."

III.

He found in his room, during the course of his marathon writing task, a napkin balled up into a wad. It was from the night he prepared dinner for her, because he remembers her saying, with all the civility in the world, "I cannot stand pimentos in the least." He remembers her delicately picking out each small piece of pimento (which he had spent an hour chopping, and because of which he had bled profusely from a cut finger) and placing it into her napkin. He remembers her twisting it in her hands as she talked to him after they finished dinner. He remembers the way she tossed it in the corner with artless elegance as they moved on to more important things.

When he finishes the last sentence of their story, and cries until his tears soak his beard, he realizes he still has the napkin, sitting, twisted, in the corner of his uneven card table. He wants to laugh at himself and cry again, so in his tormented emotional state he grabs the napkin in his shaking hand and throws it out the window, as hard as his illness will allow him to throw, in the direction of the Moulin Rouge.

His room was bad before, but back when he knew her, back when Satine frequented it, it was Bohemian and excitingly dirty. It has become a mess, worse than he found it, and he cries to think that her memories could ever be remembered in such squalor.

After another day of writing, he lays on his bed without sleep and dreams that he smells her beside him. He turns his face into the pillow and wets it with his tears as he inhales the bewitching, unnamed scent she always wore, and he remembers her beautiful red hair spread all over as she lay and talked to him for hours. He refuses, too, to change the pillowcase, because he prefers to sleep on dirty bedclothes as long as he smells her, every once in a while.

IV.

He held her and kissed the top of her head and held her body against him and gripped one of her hands so tight that he hurt her and held her to him to protect her and whispered in her ear so low that she could not hear him and held her down from the stars and told her he loved her so many times that he forgot what the words sounded like and he held her and held her and held her.

V.

On one not so very special day, he writes the last words of their story, and pulls the last sheet of paper from the typewriter, and hangs it on the wall with all the dozens of others to dry, and sits on the floor and looked at all of them fluttering in the breeze from the open window.

He loved her so much, and he had thought of _everything_ and written it all down, but he was really finished, because Satine had nothing more to say.

He begins again by ripping the bedclothes form the bed, the ugly, soiled bedclothes, and left them in the hall for the portress to launder, and thinks about how much he loves Satine.

He clumsily sweeps the dust and dirt and flotsam and jetsam from the floor and throws it all out the window and thinks about how much he loves Satine.

He tidies the room and washes his own dishes and generally restores the room to the way it had been before he ever laid eyes on it and thinks about how much he loves Satine.

It is night, a real night without clouds or Paris fog or sounds from the nearby Moulin Rouge, but with countless stars and a full moon, and he very gently removes all the sheets of paper from the walls and thoughtfully places them in a pile, until he has collected them all on his uneven card table. Then he puts on his neat pinstripe suit, a hat on his head, and binds the papers all together, and thinks about how much he loved Satine as he leaves the hotel.

VI.

The night she fainted in his room, several nights before the opening of Spectacular Spectacular, he thought little of it.

They were rehearsing for the fourth hour in a row, and he was banging out a fractious tune on a portable piano and she was alternately singing or humming depending on the finished parts they came to…

"…_so kiss me hard, 'cause this may be the last time that I let you…" _when he suddenly heard no more of her beautiful voice but instead a heavy thump as she hit the rug on his floor.

He was at her side instantly to move the hair from her face and frantically check her breathing and feel for a pulse. Her breath was coming in shallow, infrequent gasps, and he did the only thing he could think to do: he embarrassedly turned her on her side and loosened the stays on her corset. She did not immediately come around, so he got a glass of water from the tap before he even knew he had left her side and was back again, and he pulled her head onto his lap and began to dip his handkerchief in the water and apply it to her temples.

His own breath was gasping now, and he thought he should call for a doctor, or just scream for help, but he could not come up with the voice for it, and anyway she began to choke and cough back to consciousness. She opened her eyes and seemed a little scared and dazed before he stroked her cheek and gasped out was she all right, she had fainted for several minutes and was she all right, she gave him a terrible scare.

She closed her eyes and told him she was scared, too, and he told her he would help get out of that horrible costume corset, and that was when he felt the clammy sweat that was breaking out all over her body and that she still was not breathing right, so he told her that she was going to stay in his room that night, and she said fine.

He did gently take off her costume and put a cool, clean shirt of his over her, and carried her over to his bed, which was easier than he thought, yet frightening because she was so tall and felt so light in his arms. He lay in bed beside her and pulled her over until she was in his arms and he could keep the damp cloth on her forehead, and he told her he loved her and that she mustn't be afraid, because he was mean to keep her practicing all that time without a water break and it was terribly smoky in the room that day and, after all, wasn't she ladylike to faint and get her way?

She sighed and took his hand and told him she loved him, too, and that she felt so good to be there, and so much better now, and he kissed her gently and smelled her hair and held her tightly to him and fell asleep, thinking of the music and the words.

VII.

He is in the train station, and he is smiling and has been smiling all day, because out in the open for the first time in months he sees redheads everywhere, and thinks how Satine would tease him if she were there and tell him that he had "a thing". It is also early morning, and he spent all night walking about with his little suitcase in his left hand and his manuscript in his right, and watched the sun rise over the entrance to the district of Montmartre as he left it, and one cannot help but smile when one sees sun-speared dust particles dancing in the air of the Paris train station.

He hears the train whistle blow even through the noisy crowd of early morning traveler chatter, and smiles wider because the train he is about to board is going direct to the port from whence he will ship to London, where he is to meet with a modest publishing house in five days time and talk to them about a promising little story.

He has only one thing to do before he leaves Paris, and that is take care of the last of Satine's belongings, which he claimed the night she died, by releasing her little bird, which he does. It is a tiny little songbird, and he worries for a brief moment that it might not know how to fend on its own, but it hops out of the cage and twitters into the air, aiming for a hole in the high ceiling of the station, glowing with the fires of the early morning.

Then he hands over his ticket and steps onto the train and rides it into the morning sun, pulling out of Paris but thinking that he will come back again, and bring a copy of their story to Toulouse and Satie, and that someday he wants to have children so that he can bring them and show them the theatre that was the great Moulin Rouge, where for one night only the most beautiful Satine performed thesingular performance of Spectacular Spectacular, and to get those children he thinks that maybe he should have a wife, and he thinks about Satine and decides he has a long train ride to think everything over, and a long time beforehe returns.

A/N: Song lyrics come from "The Best Deceptions," by Dashboard Confessional.


End file.
